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October 13, 2006
Frequency splitting
Frequency splitting: This is tangential to our usual topics, but I suspect it may be very important in the long run. The US Federal Communication Committee will open up radio frequencies "in between" those used by television stations. When those frequencies were first allocated our tuning devices were clumsy mechanical affairs, and rightsholders had received monopoly rights to relatively large chunks of spectrum. Today there's much greater accuracy in signals and reception, yet the original grantees still lock up those big chunks of frequency, and had clear reasons to resist the change. The result of this decision is almost as if we've magically created vast new continents of wireless communication space, all by using what we already have in better fashion. More commentary at TechMeme, Ars Technica, Slashdot.
Posted by JohnDowdell at October 13, 2006 02:21 PM
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